Reviews
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‘Full Monty’ exposes audience to hilarity
By LAURIE HIGGINS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
August 14, 2008 6:00 AM
PROVINCETOWN – The musical stage version of “The Full Monty” has such a wonderful script that it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be great fun in any setting, but the Provincetown Theater provides the added bonus of an enthusiastic and uninhibited audience to heat things up.
The show starts with a Chippendale dancer stripping down to just a G-string and chaps. It’s a pretty savvy way to get audience members sitting up in their seats, and they do for Counter Productions’ version of the 1997 hit film.
The musical moves the setting from England to Buffalo, N.Y., but otherwise pretty closely follows the movie version about out-of-work steelworkers who reclaim their manhood by becoming strippers for just one night. Playwright Terrence McNally and lyricist David Yazbek have done a brilliant job of transforming the story to the stage.
When Beau Jackett, as Jerry Lukowski, sings, “I want to understand how I got to be a loser and I used to be a man,” in the opening song, “Scrap,” he sums up all the frustration he and his co-workers feel after losing not only their jobs, but their dignity.
Unwilling to take lower-paying jobs, they see their lives foundering. Their women have either left them or are thinking about it, and Jerry, who’s two months behind in child-support payments, is about to lose visitation rights. Jackett is charming and entirely sympathetic as Jerry, and his love for his son, Nathan (played by Sumner Phillips, who is a natural on stage), is palpable.
Equity actor Ethan Paulini has such great stage presence, he steals the scene every time he appears as mama’s boy Malcolm Macgregor with his spot-on timing, facial expressions and beautiful singing voice. The fact that he has played Malcolm many times before, including at Cape Rep Theatre in 2006, is evident in his performance.
Kennedy Reilly-Pugh (also an Equity actor) is showstopping as “Horse,” especially when he limps on to the stage with a bad hip and then gets down as he belts out “Big Black Man.”
Tom Boland isn’t really fat, but he does a wonderful job of capturing the insecurity of heavyweight Dave Bukatinsky, steelworker turned house husband. Kevin Doherty is hilarious as Harold Nichols, the guys’ former boss who hasn’t yet told his free-spending wife he’s been unemployed for six months. As Ethan, Max Quinn has a great running gag and, even though his character proclaims he can’t sing or dance, and gets the gig by dropping his pants, he does fine at both.
The women hold their own in this testosterone-laden show, especially Elizabeth Clark as Jerry’s ex-wife, Pam, in a reprisal of her role in the Cape Rep 2006 version. Sara Shatzel is equally harsh and tender as Dave’s sexually frustrated wife, and Sallie Tighe is an audience favorite as the wisecracking piano player Jeanette.
The end number, “Let It Go,” is so upbeat and fun, you might find yourself chanting along with Pam, “Hey, hey, what do you say. Buffalo men go all the way.”
On Stage
What: “The Fully Monty”
Presented by: Counter Productions
When: 7:30 tonight and Sundays through Wednesdays through Sept. 3
Where: The Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St.
Tickets: $28.50
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Talent abounds in ‘Wild Party’
By Theodore Rickard
CONTRIBUTING WRITER, Cape Cod Times
July 14, 2008
PROVINCETOWN – Folks here claim they know more about putting on wild parties than most people. Saturday night at the Provincetown Theatre, they showed us.
Leads Francis Kelly and Sally Schwab, Equity Actors appearing under special contract, belted out the story-line songs of the Andrew Lippa musical as though it really were the violence- and tension-filled orgy of the libretto.
“The Wild Party” songs tell the story operetta fashion. These aren’t the June-moon kind of lyrics you can hum on your way home.
Lippa, a vocalist himself as well as writer and composer, demands everything from the singers. His music is high-voltage, constantly changing style and tempo, and beautifully rendered here by John Thomas, the show’s musical director, through no fewer than 29 songs.
“The Wild Party” won a wall full of awards when it ran Off-Broadway in 2000. PTC’s show is a CTEK Arts production and it is a triumph for artistic directors Priscilla Sample and Margaret VanSant.
But a standing ovation is due director (and set designer and dance master) Bart J. Murell. The show’s story has a furious pace. The story line – definitely for adults only – is as twisted as the characters that move it, and it demands a depth of talent that is usually beyond any community theater: even the Cape ones.
Sally Schwab drives the horror story as Queenie, the scheming hostess. The party plot spins around Burrs, her brutal and drunken lover, a role that is developed with highly effective actor’s control by Francis Kelly. There are few actors who can at once convey deeply felt inner stresses and execute a violent-action scenario. These two manage it. And somehow, too, they manage to sing song after song as naturally as though they were simply speaking the lines.
The second leads made it all come together: Adam Berry as Black is a most effective protagonist, and Lacey A. Waite as Kate, the vamp, is a lady who knows how to take center stage when it’s called for. Both of them handle roles as difficult as the leads. Waite has a show-stopper song, “Look at Me Now,” and she makes all of us do just that.
Two key supporting roles call for special notice: N. Vane as the cruising lesbian and Marlane Barnes as the perky flapper gave us Broadway-quality performances in the two comic songs that set off the darkly fatal story.
A talented battery of singers fill out the cast: John Ambrosino, Brian Boisse, Elizabeth Bridgewater, Brian Carlson, Latez Crawley and Darlene VanAlstyne worked together opening night as if they’d done it a hundred times before. And this show was so obviously rehearsed to professional standards, maybe they had.
Another note due: Stepping into the role on one day’s notice when the original cast member had to drop out was Tom D’Angora, who played the belligerent drunken boxer as if he were one. Talk about a quick study.
Special mention has to be made, too, of the costuming. Designed by Lisa Ventre and Stephen Carey, the costumes brought us immediately into the Roaring Twenties. Serious money was spent on the costuming, and it was a great investment.
Don’t take the kiddies to “The Wild Party,” but be sure to go yourself.
This is a rare chance to enjoy well-written modern theater, creatively directed and performed by an amazingly talented cast of singer-actors.
ON STAGE
What: “The Wild Party”
Written by: Andrew Lippa
Presented by: CTEK Arts
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, through Aug. 10
Where: Provincetown Theatre, 238 Bradford St.
Tickets: $33.50; senior or student $30.50
Reservations: 508-487-7487
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Tick Tick Boom
Adam Berry, Ethan Paulini and Denise Parks star in “Tick Tick Boom.”
By Sue Harrison
Provincetown Banner
Posted Jun 26, 2008 @ 12:01 PM
PROVINCETOWN –
Counter Production’s staging of Jonathan Larson’s “Tick Tick Boom” is about as good as it gets. The play, the music, the arrangements, the acting, the directing, the sets – all are just what they should be.
Larson, who picked up the 1996 Pulitzer for “Rent,” wrote this play originally as a rock monologue in which all the parts were performed by himself.
It was later re-written for three characters: Jon, the aspiring playwright; Susan, his girlfriend, a dancer; and Michael, Jon’s roommate and best friend. There are other roles, and the actors trade off on those. It is the three-person script that is performed by Counter Productions.
The play is autobiographical and tracks the tale of Jon as he approaches 30, a terrifying number to a young man who’s spent the last decade trying to gain a toehold in New York’s world of musical theater with zero success. Is he done? Can he make it? Is there any reason to keep trying? Should he just sell out and settle, or keep the dream alive? The big three-oh is a sort of early midlife crisis for a guy whose heart is there but no one seems to hear it beating.
His agent doesn’t return his calls. His best friend, Michael, a really terrific actor, has wearied of living in their six-floor SoHo walkup where you have to step over homeless people to get out the door. Michael got a good job and just bought a new BMW and a cushy apartment uptown. He is definitely “movin’ on up.”
Susan is ready to give up the competitive life of dance in New York and wishes Jon would think about leaving the city and moving out to the country. She wants kids and trees, he wants a full house on Broadway.
The storyline counts down the five days until Jon’s birthday, and in those days his world and life will change in unexpected, sometimes great, sometimes painful ways.
(This video was shot during rehearsal the week before opening. The song has been edited for length. Ethan Paulini sings “30/90” with Adam Berry and Denise Parks joining in later – videographer’s note.)
Ethan Paulini is solid as Jon. You can almost feel his angst crawling across his skin. He’s a perfect Jon in jeans and black tee paired with somewhat spiky hair and wavering hope. Paulini has played this role before and is himself based in New York.
Michael is played by Provincetown stage veteran Adam Berry, who is back for his sixth season. He’s performed locally with several companies on the Outer Cape in “Bat Boy,” “Hair,” “Camille” and many other plays. Berry has an innate charm that makes him a good choice and foil for the Jon character.
Denise Parks looks very slinky in her role as Susan. She has the strongest voice overall but the least stage experience, which is not much of a liability since the meat of the play is the music. Parks is a Cape native who has performed since kindergarten and has a cabaret act at the Pilgrim House with Casey Sanderson, this play’s musical director. The three actors’ voices blend beautifully in this fast-paced musical interspersed with brief bits of sharp dialogue.
The songs are like another character. Each of the show’s numbers are strong enough to stand alone and they are all delivered so well by this threesome that one audience member was heard to say, “They should make a soundtrack CD,” as he was leaving. The songs were all well-applauded showstoppers. There is so much energy on stage that the room fairly crackles at times.
There is little fault to find in this production. Susan Grilli’s direction has forged a top-notch show. Sanderson’s musical direction is perfect and forms an integral part of the night, as a full band on stage with three actors calls for a deft touch to be sure that the music’ ranging from soft and tender to raucous, supports and doesn’t overwhelm.
Great sets and lighting. Just one of those, I’m-so-glad-I-saw-it plays.
At the close of opening night the cast got a heartfelt standing ovation, and when the actors didn’t come back out for a second curtain call, the audience just patiently sat down and continued to applaud until they did.
Put this on your “to see” list. You won’t be sorry.
Tick, Tick…Boom! Counter Productions opens the season with Jonathan Larson’s play at The Provincetown Theater
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